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Ontario takes baby steps toward liberalizing the beer market
At the Toronto Beer Blog, a less-than-enthused look at the latest changes to minimally change the just-barely-beyond-prohibition-era rules for selling beer in Ontario: This has been a noisy day in the...
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Straight Up: The Issue of Alcohol in Ontario
Published on 24 Nov 2014 A documentary exploring the peculiar system of alcohol retail and distribution in Ontario. The beverage alcohol system in Ontario is unique in the world. A government monopoly...
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“We’re very inefficient … and proud of it”
Published on 3 Oct 2015 Craft Brewery tourism is on the rise. Ontario Craft Breweries are opening throughout the province; eventually there will be one in every community. These breweries are a...
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For a change, a sensible trademark ruling
Timothy Geigner on a remarkably sensible trademark judgement from a BC court: For this, we travel up to Canada, where a Federal Court judge presided over a trademark dispute between Pacific Western...
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A countertop home-brewing appliance
Pulkit Chandna reviews the “Brewie”: In the future, at-home beer brewing will be a set-it-and-forget-it cinch, and not the convoluted mess we have always known it to be. That’s the feeling one gets...
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Food labelling laws and craft brewing … not a match made in heaven
Eric Boehm on how well-intentioned laws can still have significant and unforeseen negative side-effects: Brewers are facing the prospect of spending potentially thousands to determine calorie counts...
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Moderate drinking and statistical health outcomes
Aaron Carroll debunks some myths about booze and health: Over the past year, I’ve tried to clear up a lot of the misconceptions on food and drink: about salt, artificial sweeteners, among others, even...
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The craft beer movement infiltrates the land of vodka
In The Guardian, Alec Luhn reports on the rise of craft brewing in the heart of vodka-swilling Russia: It is a drizzly Monday night, but Craft rePUBlic is boisterous with the chatter of brewers and...
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BrewDog releases all their beer recipies
Lester Haines on the recent decision by BrewDog to open source their entire beer recipie list: From humble home-brewing origins, James Watt and Martin Dickie have grown BrewDog to an international...
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“Craft” brewers that are actually owned by big breweries
Matt Allyn lists quite a number of craft breweries in the United States that are no longer independent or were never independent of the big brewing corporations: It matters who owns your beer, says...
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Brace yourselves for Beer Store price hikes
In the Toronto Star, Rob Ferguson details the provincial government’s new-hatched plans to pry more money out of consumers (by way of the Beer Store monopoly): Premier Kathleen Wynne says she won’t...
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The Beeriodic Table
Christine Hurlbut sent me a link to The Beginner’s Guide to Craft Beer which included a neat little “family tree of beer styles” image. Unfortunately, the version they embedded was too small to be...
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QotD: Coping with beer experts
Beer is a far dodgier subject in these post-real-ale days — there are experts everywhere. Safest to adopt the generic Amis Defence Against Knowledge and treat the whole subject as an eccentric fad. If...
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You can’t trademark the mere arrangement of a few letters
At Techdirt, Timothy Geigner explains why a recent trademark action was (sensibly) dropped: Here we almost went again. The craft beer space was known for quite a while for its congenial attitude when...
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QotD: Bitterness about bitterness
And if I may insert a personal plea: could the bittermongers please knock it off with the sneers? Somehow, in the collective cocktail consciousness of America’s hipsters, “bitter” has become synonymous...
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Even the Fed pays attention to the rise of craft brewing
The Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond had an interesting article on the rise of craft beer by Jamie Feik and Joseph Mengedoth: In many places across the country, it’s hard not to notice the shift in...
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Toronto craft brewers and beer cans
Ben Johnson explains the rising popularity of beer cans even among microbreweries in the Toronto area: Whether it be memories of your dad’s garage fridge filled with industrial lager in little tins or...
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Better hops through science
At Wired, Katie M. Palmer discusses an interesting (if only to brewers and beer fans) development in the quest for better beer: For craft breweries, originality is everything. Your favorite microbrew...
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Flying Monkeys …. in spaaaaaaace!
Published on 11 Aug 2015 On June 4th, 2015 we sent Flying Monkeys SuperCollider 2.0 DIPA craft beer into space just for kicks. After 3 hours in flight it came back to earth from 109,780 feet. The...
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The beer ineQuality index
I took a couple of weeks off over the summer and subsequently forgot some of the interesting articles I’d intended to link to from the blog (but no sensible person comes here for breaking news, do...
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Beer? In Ontario grocery stores? It’s more likely than you think
Ben’s Beer Blog scores an exclusive interview with Tom Barlow, President and CEO of the Canadian Federation of Independent Grocers on the topic of liberalizing Ontario’s Prohibition-era market access...
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Craft brewing has a growing trademark problem
At Techdirt, Timothy Geigner predicts that the craft beer market is getting close to trademark armageddon … they’re running out of punny names they can legally use for their beer: With all the...
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Rona Ambrose reveals the secret to her AMAZING beer pong skillz
Sarah Boesveld interviews interim Conservative leader Rona Ambrose: […] And how’s your beer-pong game? Are you kidding me? My beer pong game is AMAZING. We had a huge beer-pong tournament at Stornoway...
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America’s craft beer revolution
Jerry Weinberger reviews The United States of Beer: A Freewheeling History of the All-American Drink by Dane Huckelbridge: In rich and full detail, Huckelbridge tells the story of America’s love affair...
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Seasonal beers – Yule Shoot Your Eye Out
It’s from a brewer in Houston I’ve never heard of, so the chances that it’ll appear in the government monopoly liquor stores here in Ontario are pretty small: A Christmas Story is such a staple of the...
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Plan your travels so you’re always close to good beer
While I haven’t been travelling much in the last few years, I always appreciate the chance to sample the local wines and beers in the regions I visit. Wired Mapland looks at some mapping projects to...
View ArticleCraft brewers against the big breweries in North Carolina
The rising tide of craft brewing runs up against the entrenched political interests of the big brewers in Raleigh: North Carolina politicians in Raleigh like to say they’re pro-jobs and pro-business....
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You like cheap beer, dude?
Here’s a cheap beer for you, dude: DUDE BEER! Finally, a beer for dudes! From Andy: Dude Beer. Black can, white lettering, simple Dude Beer on the can/box. It’s genius! We drank a shit load of this...
View ArticleSome of the Super Bowl commercials Canadians won’t see on TV
The audience for the Super Bowl is split between fans of the game (who actually care about the outcome) and fans of the ads (because this is the biggest TV audience, advertisers pull out all the stops...
View ArticleThe Beer Store’s pre-emptive strike against a competitive market in Ontario
Yesterday I got a robo-call from someone representing The Beer Store (what used to be known as the Brewer’s Retail … for my American readers, think of your local DMV crossed with a Cold War-era Soviet...
View ArticleTired of wine snobbery? Now trending – beer snobbery
In the Wall Street Journal, William Bostwick looks at a new aspect of the craft beer world — age-worthy beers and ales: Still, you can’t buy just anything and lay it down to age. Not all beers get...
View ArticleCalling BS on the Beer Store ad campaign
Michael Pinkus takes a short pause from his usual wine reviews (and decrying the LCBO for their stone-age approach to selling wine) to throw some scorn at the foreign-owned multinational oligopoly that...
View ArticleCraft brewers face potential hop shortages
BBC News has terrible news for craft beer fans: Hops are hot. Their price in the US has doubled in 10 years. Some even predict the equivalent of Armageddon for beer lovers — a hops shortage. The reason...
View ArticleIndia Pale Ale – the first “global” beer
The Economist looks back at the history of India Pale Ale, the first truly global beer: INDIA pale ale (IPA) had a good claim to be the first global beer, before lager took a grip on the world’s...
View ArticleThe decline of the British pub won’t be stopped by more rules and regulations
In sp!ked, Rossa Minogue agrees with the Campaign for Real Ale that the British pub as a fixture of daily life is in rapid decline, but warns that CAMRA’s proposed remedy will not turn things around:...
View ArticleNew report calls for Ontario to break up the LCBO
In the Toronto Star, Richard Brennan reports on a new study by the C.D. Howe Institute calling for the province to join the modern era: The “quasi-monopoly” LCBO and The Beer Store have hosed Ontario...
View ArticleHow post-Prohibition restrictions still plague many states
The American craft beer boom continues, but making the beer is only the start of the process of getting the beer into the hands of eager consumers. CEI’s Michelle Minton explains how rules crafted for...
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Welcome to Indiana, here is your regulatory compliance brewpub menu
Indiana, like most states, has some odd laws still on the books from the immediate post-Prohibition era, including a “food requirements” rule that specifies that any establishment that serves retail...
View ArticleAmerican craft beer fans owe Jimmy Carter a hearty “Cheers!”
If you like your beer — that is beer for the taste rather than for the numbing effect of the alcohol — you probably prefer craft beer (or imports). You should probably thank the man who finally made it...
View ArticleQotD: No True Irishman
I speak for every true potato-loving mick on the planet when I say that St. Patrick’s Day is a genuine Irish holiday that’s been corrupted into Amateur Drunk Day by us filthy Americans. Nobody in...
View ArticleYou can now have beer brewed to your taste (as encoded in your genome)
For those with a taste for custom-brewed beer (and a very big budget), you can now have a batch of beer created to match your taste preferences, scientifically: London-based Meantime Brewing Company,...
View ArticleQotD: The dubious “value add” of the LCBO
The liquor board’s cocktail recipe of the month, offered on its website, is for “gin and lemonade,” which you make with a shot of gin and some lemonade. The gin is cherry, so there’s that. Its three...
View ArticleRaging Bitch, Good Shit, and Flying Dog Beer’s Fight for Free Speech
Published on 10 May 2017 “I’ve lived my life as a pro free enterprise person,” explains Flying Dog Brewery CEO Jim Caruso. “Not pro business. Pro free enterprise, pro consumer choice, artisanal...
View Article“Maybe this is creeping privatization after all. It’s certainly worth a shot”
Chris Selley on the neither one thing nor the other state of alcohol retailing in Ontario: On Tuesday the government enumerated 76 new Ontario supermarkets where, by Canada Day, you will be able to buy...
View Article“Ah, the Comeau case. Schwisberg says it could change everything – knock down...
It’s ridiculous that 150 years into Confederation, and we still don’t have free trade within Canada: If you’re on vacation abroad somewhere this summer and find yourself explaining to people over...
View ArticleThings to keep firmly in mind before investing in legalized marijuana markets
There will definitely be money to be made as more and more jurisdictions move to legalize marijuana, but it’s not going to be like soup raining down from heaven — it’s not going to be a simple as just...
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Craft brewers are good examples of “evasive entrepreneurs”
Rosemarie Fike explains why craft brewers almost always push tours of their premises and souvenir glasses, mugs, coasters, and T-shirts: This summer I’ve been enjoying a lot of microbrewery tours —...
View ArticleQotD: “Beer”
“Lager” is an inherently ambiguous word these days. It can mean “wonderful, full-bodied, malty, highly hopped beer aged for weeks,” or it can mean “soap-flavored water for pussies who are frightened by...
View ArticleWhy Does American Beer Taste Like Water?
The Good Stuff Published on 29 Jun 2016 Americans drink 51 Billion Pints of beer every single year. Despite the abundance of craft beers available, the most popular variety is the traditional light...
View ArticleBeer Brewing – Roger Casement – Surviving Aces I OUT OF THE TRENCHES
The Great War Published on 16 Dec 2017 Ask your questions here: http://outofthetrenches.thegreatwar.tv Related posts: Why Was Haig Still in Command? I OUT OF THE TRENCHES Adpocalypse Update – Out Of...
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